Essay

Essay

Essay

After the Revolutionary War, the reformist wing of the American Revolutionists began to inscribe plans for striking at the heart of colonial inequalities and conservative governmental structures. The reformers were met with plenty of resistance from social, economic, and political conservatives, and they by no means reached all their goals. Nobody put pen to paper to carve out a systematic plan for thoroughgoing reform. Rather, different groups, different men and women, different organizations, each with their own experiences and hopes for the future, espoused a variety of changes.

Essay

Historians are generally agreed that if the Constitution had been put before the electorate for an up-and-down vote—a plebescite, in effect—it would not have been ratified. This essay considers how three large groups—African Americans, artisans, and small farmers—viewed the Constitution, and examines why these groups had deep reservations about its ability to steer the nation forward without compromising the founding principles of the American Revolution.

Glossary Term – Event

In his annual message to Congress, President Lincoln urged passage of Thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery in the United States. The Emancipation Proclamation had freed only those slaves in states still at war. The permanent emancipation of all slaves required a constitutional amendment. In April 1864, the Senate passed the Thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery in the United States. Opposition from Democratic congressmen prevented the amendment from receiving the required two-thirds majority in the House. Only after Lincoln was...

Glossary Term – Organization

During the Civil War, Southern slaves who escaped to Union lines came to be called “contrabands.” The term was first used by General Benjamin Butler, who refused to return escaped slaves to Confederate slaveholders because he deemed them “contraband of war.”